


Wilson and Barnes

by anarres



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Car Chase, Friendship, Gen, Gun Fight, Mission Fic, PTSD, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24534391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarres/pseuds/anarres
Summary: It's 2024 and HYDRA is trying to restart Project Insight. Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes must race to stop them!The Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV show is going to come out... sometime, meanwhile this is my take on what that show might possibly be like.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	Wilson and Barnes

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings:  
> \- PTSD and memory problems.  
> \- Torture. (Brief and non-graphic, but still.)  
> \- Discussion of social darwinism and eugenics.  
> \- Story is written from Bucky Barnes-perspective, not Omniscient Narrator-perspective, so take everything with a grain of salt.

Bucky Barnes had cooked himself a nice meal - salmon, rice and asparagus - eaten it, and was washing the dishes, half-listening to a podcast about Technology in Ancient Rome, when the intruder came. There was hardly any sound, just a faint thump of something landing on the balcony - one man, light on his feet. Bucky put down the plate he'd been washing, dried his wet hands on a tea towel, and retrieved the handgun hidden at the back of the cutlery drawer. He walked silently into the living room in time to take aim at a black-suited figure just coming in from the balcony. The intruder was small, a woman. Shit, she was Natasha Romanoff. The Black Widow.

"Hi, soldier," Romanoff drawled.

Bucky said, not lowering the weapon: "You're dead."

"I'm not dead," Romanoff rebutted mildly, as if she was talking about the weather. She walked into the room, looking around, and trailed one finger down the back of the sofa, not seeming to care that he kept his weapon trained on her.

"This is a nice apartment," she said approvingly. "Or, not bad, anyway. Better than your old place in Bucharest."

She strolled into the kitchen. Bucky lowered the weapon and followed her. Romanoff cast a glance into the sink and asked: "Why wash dishes by hand when you have a dishwasher? Is it because you miss the good old days?"

Bucky replied: "It's not worth it for just one plate. Did you come here just to check up on me?"

The Widow turned and flashed him a wide smile that didn't reach her eyes. "No. I came with a mission."

Bucky sighed. "That's what I thought."

"We leave right now, so grab whatever you want to take."

Bucky went back to the living room to check the balcony door. She'd done a professional job of picking the lock without damaging it. He locked it, then went around the apartment checking the windows.

"Some warning would have been nice," he said over his shoulder.

"Yeah, for me too," the Widow replied drily.

Bucky put on his boots, fetched the black duffel from the back of his closet, and led Romanoff out of the apartment, locking the door behind him. "We're taking the elevator this time," he told her, earning a half-smirk in reply.

She led him to a nondescript car double-parked in front of his building. In the passenger seat sat Sam Wilson, aka The Falcon.

"Unbelievable," Wilson said emphatically as Bucky got into the back seat, moving over to the driver's side to get a few more inches of leg room. "Unbelievable," Wilson said again, putting emphasis on the third syllable. He sounded both surprised and annoyed.

Romanoff said nonchalantly: "I told you I'd deliver the Winter Soldier, and I did." She started the engine and pulled the car out into the traffic.

"My name's Bucky," Bucky said quietly, "not... that."

Wilson turned in his seat to glare at Bucky. "Do you even know people are looking for you?" he asked. "You disappeared off the face of the Earth. No-one knows where you are, you're not online, you don't answer my five million calls or my eight million texts."

"Did you care?" Bucky asked, genuinely curious.

Wilson stared at him, eyes wide, jaw dropped. Then he turned back around in his seat and let his head fall back against the headrest. "You are something else, Barnes," he muttered, his tone making clear that it wasn't a compliment.

Romanoff drove them by a meandering route to a parking garage where they switched vehicles, to an unmarked white van with dark-tinted windows. The three of them piled into the front, Wilson holding the door open to let Bucky in so he'd have to take the middle seat.

They drove for three-quarters of an hour, and when Romanoff parked the van, legally this time, they were nowhere in particular as far as Bucky could tell. It was a nondescript street with a mix of houses and apartment buildings and small stores.

"We're not going far," Romanoff said as they got out, and she smiled as if she'd said something funny. She led them around to the back of the vehicle and opened the doors. Inside, the back of the van was done up with wooden benches running along both sides. A higher wooden bench at the end acted as a desk / workstation, with a couple of laptops sitting on it. There was a footlocker, a weapons rack, and a 12-volt battery and converter to power the laptops.

"Oooookay," Wilson said, unimpressed.

"Just get in," said Romanoff.

They got in. Bucky immediately sat down, since there wasn't really enough room to stand and anyway the ceiling was low enough that he'd bang his head. Wilson took a seat on the bench across from him.

"Did you buy all this stuff at Army Surplus?" Wilson asked.

"Not all of it," Romanoff replied, her nose wrinkling in distaste for just a moment before her expression smoothed itself out again.

"Seriously," Wilson said, "this isn't exactly SHIELD's usual style, is it?"

"SHIELD doesn't exist anymore," Romanoff pointed out, "as you know very well, since we both helped destroy it. All three of us are technically fugitives."

"Yeah, some of us are better at that than others," Wilson said darkly, casting a glare at Bucky.

Romanoff said: "We need to make do with the resources available to us, at least for now. And your mission briefing starts now, so listen up." She reached for one of the laptops.

"Are you still working for Fury?" Wilson interrupted.

Romanoff smiled icily. "Nick Fury isn't exactly my boss anymore. We're more like... co-conspirators."

"Okay. And you think I'm going to do this mission or whatever it is just on your say-so?" Wilson asked.

"You came, didn't you?" Romanoff countered.

"I came because you said you knew how to find Bucky Barnes."

Bucky's eyebrows went up.

Wilson looked at Bucky. "Do you trust her?" he asked.

Bucky shrugged and replied simply: "Steve did."

Romanoff's expression went extra-blank.

Wilson said: "Steve trusted me, too." He glared at Bucky, who looked back impassively. "You ghosted on me, man. And I know this fugitive thing is hard, and I know Steve... leaving, is really, really hard, but I know you could have contacted me if you wanted. Two months now, I kept calling and texting you and you couldn't be bothered to pick up a phone and tell me you're still alive. But now it seems the Black Widow only needs fifteen minutes to convince you to pack your bag and go on a road trip."

It had actually taken less than one minute for Romanoff to convince him, Bucky reflected; Wilson must be including the time it had taken her to scale the building.

"That was different," Bucky said. His voice sounded soft and raspy in his own ears. He hadn't used it much, lately.

"How was it different?" asked Wilson.

Bucky flicked his eyes up at Romanoff. "She needs me for a mission. You just wanted to make small talk."

Wilson did a slow, deliberate inhale-exhale. Then he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, and said: "Look, I understand how, with all you've been through, your social skills might be a little rusty, so I'm going to explain this very clearly. When I call your phone, you pick up. Even if you don't think it's important. Even if it's not for a mission. And when I text you saying that I'm worried so can you please at least tell me you're not dead, you answer. That. Text."

Bucky said: "Okay."

Wilson leaned back. "Okay? Just like that?"

Bucky said: "I'm sorry. I didn't know it mattered."

Wilson's expression softened. "It matters."

Romanoff stood watching them, her hands on her hips. "Are you two going to hug?" she asked, "because I feel like you should hug." Both men glared at her. "No? Then how about I get this briefing started."

She tapped a key on one of the laptops, bringing up an image: it looked like a very old computer screen, glowing green type on a dark grey background; the screen was full of what seemed to be random characters, but the characters were arranged to approximate a human face.

"That's Arnim Zola," Bucky said tightly.

"Zola - Project Insight Zola?" Wilson clarified, "the Nazi scientist who turned himself into a computer program?"

"That's the one," Romanoff replied with mock-cheerfulness.

"He's dead, right?" Wilson asked, "because I definitely remember him being dead. I mean the human version of him was already dead and then the computer program version of him died when SHIELD dropped a missile on him back in 2014, when they were trying to kill you and Steve."

"That wasn't SHIELD, that was HYDRA," Romanoff corrected. 

Wilson waved a hand, indicating that he didn't see much difference between SHIELD and HYDRA but couldn't be bothered to argue the point. 

Romanoff continued: "And Zola might not be entirely gone. I mean, the human version definitely died in the seventies, but we have intel that the artificial intelligence version of Zola might still exist, along with some version of his algorithm. The one that allowed him to identify millions of people as potential 'enemies of HYDRA' to be eliminated."

"If that's true..." Wilson began, and trailed off. He stared at the image of Zola on the screen.

"I'm going to be honest, the intel on this is thin," Romanoff said. "It might be nothing. I really, really hope it's nothing. But if it's something, we can't afford to ignore it." 

She tapped at the laptop's keyboard, bringing up another image, this time a man in his early thirties; white, with thinning light brown hair, in a white button-up shirt. He looked utterly unremarkable. She went on: "This is Micheal Lewis. He's American, an expert in data science and artificial intelligence, until recently he worked at a New York branch of a Silicon Valley firm, but he was pushed out and is currently suing his former employers. Lewis claims his employers stole his ideas and failed to give him credit, while his employers say he's arrogant and delusional, and not as smart as he thinks he is. No family, except his parents who he communicates with a couple of times a year, and no close friends. His political views are libertarian, he's a big believer in free markets, small government, and Bitcoin. No history of crime or involvement in terrorist groups, but our source tells us he's been recruited by HYDRA."

"A loner with a superiority complex and a grudge," Wilson mused. "I can see how he might be a good fit for HYDRA."

"He's not really a true believer though," Romanoff went on, "as far as we can tell, he's just in it for the money and the chance to work on what he considers to be an interesting project. HYDRA wouldn't normally work with someone like that, they prize loyalty above all else, but we think they're desperate for his expertise. He has no combat training and he's probably not willing to die rather than give up HYDRA's secrets. He'll be easier to find and easier to handle than most HYDRA. He lives here." An address in Philadelphia appeared on the screen, along with a photo of a suburban house on a spacious, leafy street. "I need you to go there and find out everything Lewis knows."

There was a pause. Wilson said: "That's it?"

"That's it," Romanoff replied with a smile. "You think you can handle it?"

"Not exactly," Wilson said. "What if he doesn't want to tell us everything he knows?"

"Barnes will handle that part," Romanoff replied smoothly.

Both of them looked at Bucky.

"I'll handle that part," Bucky agreed tonelessly.

Wilson made a sour face. He opened his mouth and then closed it as if he was struggling to decide what to say. Finally he came out with: "This is creepy." He looked at Romanoff and then looked back at Bucky. "This is creepy," he said again.

Romanoff rolled her eyes and said, exasperated: "Look, Lewis is potentially preparing to murder millions of people. I'm not even asking you to kill him! Just get information out of him."

Wilson suggested angrily: "How about we arrest him? How about that?"

Romanoff waved her hand to indicate the cheaply kitted-out van interior. "I would if I could! Obviously this is not an official operation. SHIELD is gone and the other agencies, CIA, FBI, they think HYDRA was destroyed in 2014, they don't realize how many remnants survived what happened in 2014 and have been biding their time ever since. Now, Nick Fury is working on that, trying to get HYDRA on the official radar as a serious and ongoing threat, but that will take time. In the meantime, the official agencies won't touch it. We're on our own here."

Bucky said quietly: "Whatever information we find, we can bring it to the right people, the police or whatever."

Romanoff's face went blank. "That would be one option, yes. Depending on what the information is, and how we need to respond to it."

Wilson looked at Romanoff. "If this mission is just creepy information gathering, what do you guys need me for? I'm just a soldier. Spy stuff isn't exactly part of my skill set."

"Oh, I'm not going with you," Romanoff replied, "I've got other errands to run. It'll just be you and Barnes."

Before Wilson could answer Bucky said abruptly: "We have a problem." His voice was flat and harsh, a contrast from the soft drawl he'd displayed a moment before.

Bucky stood, crouching to avoid hitting his head on the van's ceiling, got out his duffel from where he'd stashed it under the bench, and pulled out a semi-automatic rifle.

"What kind of problem?" Romanoff asked quietly.

Wilson also stood, crouching, and unholstered the gun at his hip.

Bucky unzipped his hoodie, removed it and hung it by the hood from the end of his rifle, opened the van door a few inches and pushed the dangling hoodie out past it.

There was a burst of gunfire. Bucky slammed the door shut and let the hoodie, now riddled with bullet holes, fall to the floor. 

"HYDRA found us," he said unnecessarily.

"We're sitting ducks in here," Romanoff pointed out.

There was a noise like rapid-fire thunder as gunfire slammed into one side of the van, causing the metal sides to dimple and buckle inwards.

Bucky shouted: "Get down!" and Wilson and Romanoff both threw themselves to the narrow strip of floor between the benches. Bucky scrambled along one of the benches to get to the front, where he yanked the wooden table top out of the wall. He handed the heavy wooden plank to Wilson, shouting: "Use that as a shield if you have to." Then he slammed his metal arm into the wall that separated the back from the front of the van. The metal buckled. Bucky reared back and slammed his fist into the wall again, and again, until the metal punctured and tore.

"Faster would be better!" Romanoff shouted, and tossed him the keys.

They were still being fired on. The side of the van was a mess, the metal torn and crumpled inward, and some of the bullets were making it in now, slamming into the opposite interior wall over Wilson and Romanoff's heads.

Bucky ripped at the torn metal until he had a hole large enough to climb through and scrambled into the driver's seat, where he turned the key in the ignition and drove. The nightmarish sound of bullets slamming into metal abruptly fell away.

"Everyone okay?" Bucky shouted, accelerating as fast as the van was capable down the suburban street.

"I'm good!" Wilson shouted.

"Fine!" added the Widow.

Bucky slammed the van into a tight turn, and there was a crash as the clutter in the back of the van shifted.

"Ow, ow, ow," Wilson moaned, "okay, now I think I have injuries."

Romanoff squirmed through the hole to join Bucky in the front, and brushed herself off. "We being followed?" she asked.

"Yep," Bucky replied tightly, "two grey sedans."

"Dammit," Romanoff cursed.

Bucky made another too-fast, too-tight corner and drove at high speed through an almost-too-narrow alley before coming back out into the main traffic. These suburban streets were no good for throwing off pursuers, and the ripped-up van doing twice the speed limit was going to get noticed by the police sooner rather than later.

"These guys aren't even the real problem," Romanoff said tightly.

"Actually," Wilson called from the back, "I think the HYDRA agents trying to kill us are a pretty big problem. Just my two cents."

Romanoff ignored him. "If they followed me they've obviously figured out I'm going after Lewis. They'll warn him and Lewis will run, or HYDRA will hide him, and we'll miss our one chance."

Bucky steered the van into an intersection on a red light and turned left, forcing the oncoming traffic to swerve to avoid him. There was a chorus of car horns and shouting. "What's your plan?" he asked.

Romanoff thought for just a second. "We need to ditch this van and we need to split up. I'll make a big, shiny distraction, you and Wilson run like hell, get to Lewis, and get his intel."

A siren pierced the air; a police car was approaching, but it was quite a long way back, behind the two HYDRA sedans that were still following them.

"There's a big store up ahead," Bucky suggested.

"How does that help us?" Romanoff asked.

"Big parking lot. Lots of cover when we go on foot, plenty of choice of cars to steal, even at this hour."

"That's not great cover," Romanoff complained.

"Better than nothing," Bucky shot back.

"Guys, there are going to be a lot of of civilians, we need to be careful!" Wilson shouted from the back.

Bucky swerved into the parking lot of a Walmart. He drove past rows of customer parking and went round the side of the building, where a couple of big semi-trailer trucks were parked in front of an open loading bay. He pulled up between the trucks and the building, where the van was mostly hidden from sight.

"Well, that buys us about ten seconds," Romanoff muttered.

"Those guys are gonna be on us any second!" Wilson warned, echoing her thought.

"And I look forward to meeting them," Romanoff said sweetly. She dove acrobatically through the hole to the back of the van, where she picked up one of the laptops from the rubble on the floor. It was partly shattered. She put it down again. Bucky followed her through the hole into the back of the van, retrieved his rifle, and packed it into his duffel bag. Natasha had opened the weapons locker and was cramming extra handguns into her belt. Bucky pushed open the van's back doors and the three of the emerged into the parking lot.

Romanoff tilted her head towards the open loading bay. "You two go through the store. Don't run, walk. Blend in with the crowd," she told them. "Then find a car and get to Lewis."

"What are you going to do?" Wilson asked.

A man walked around the front of the nearest semi-trailer truck, noticed them, and shouted: "Hey, you can't park there!"

Natasha smiled sweetly. "I'm going to steal that truck," she told them. She walked toward the man who was trying to get their attention, aimed a gun at him, and called out: "Give me the keys to that truck, now."

The man's face twisted into a sneer. "No way in hell."

"Fine," Romanoff said, and with a put-upon sigh she holstered the gun and electrocuted the man with her Widow's Bite. As the man lay on the ground twitching and grunting she patted him down, retrieved a set of keys from his pocket, and ran for the truck.

"Come on," Bucky said, slapping Wilson on the shoulder. The two men jogged into the building through the open bay door, then slowed to a walk as they made their way through a stocking area. They drew curious stares as they went past, but no-one approached them. Then they emerged into the store, walking past aisles of clothing, sporting goods, bicycles and children's toys.

"So," Wilson asked in a low voice, "what's our next move?"

"We steal a car," Bucky replied softly.

"Of course we do," sighed Wilson. "You know, we're supposed to be the good guys."

"We'll only take it for a few hours," murmured Bucky, "then we'll park it somewhere it's sure to get towed and the owner will have it back within a day or two."

"Yeah, we're practically good samaritans," Wilson said sarcastically.

They walked past aisles of vacuum cleaners, lampshades and laundry baskets.

"So you know how to hotwire a car, I take it?" Wilson asked.

"Some cars," replied Bucky, "older models. But it's probably easier to just take someone's keys."

"So, carjacking, nice," was Wilson's comment.

The emerged from the store into the parking lot and Bucky, apparently not looking where he was going, walked right into a gentleman who had just parked his Ford Explorer and was talking, distracted, into his mobile phone. Bucky apologized profusely for his clumsiness, brushed the man off and straightened his clothes for him, and wished him a very good day after pocketing his keys.

They both scanned the street tensely as Bucky drove, but no pursuers appeared in the rear view mirror. After a few minutes had passed they both relaxed. They had a more than two hours' drive ahead of them to get to Lewis's home.

"What do you think are the chances Lewis is still there when we get there?" Wilson asked.

"It's worth a try," Bucky replied, "Lewis isn't HYDRA, he won't be disciplined like they are. Could be they tell him he needs to get out, he spends five hours packing his stuff and looking for the best hotel on Google. Or they might not tell him anything at all. HYDRA shares information on a need-to-know basis, and I doubt they think Lewis needs to know much of anything outside his own project."

"Won't they just bundle him away into some safehouse?" Wilson asked.

"They might," Bucky replied, "they will if they're smart. We have to hope they're not smart."

They made it onto the highway.

"So, Romanoff," Wilson said curiously, "did you know she was still alive?"

"No."

"Do you have any idea how?"

"No."

Wilson answered his own question: "Well, Nick Fury faked his death once, so I guess that's a thing people do sometimes."

Bucky wasn't much of a conversationalist, so they spent most of the drive in silence.

"So, Bucky, what have you been doing for the past couple of months?" Wilson asked at one point.

"This and that."

"This and that," Wilson repeated, "okay. You wanna give me some specific examples of what kind of this and that you've been getting up to?"

"This and that," Bucky repeated, with a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth.

"Okay then."

The drive to Lewis's address took a couple of hours. It was an ordinary house in an affluent suburb. They parked the car on the street and took a quick walk around the property.

"It's alarmed," Bucky said, "best way in is probably through a window, but they're double glazed so it'll be loud as hell."

"I have a crazy idea," Wilson said, "how about we ring the doorbell?"

Bucky shrugged, stepped up to the door and rang the bell. After a few seconds he rang it again. From inside there was a sound of footsteps, and a man's voice saying "What the hell?"

The footsteps paused just in front of the door, the person inside no doubt looking through the peephole at Bucky. Bucky smiled and rang the doorbell again.

The door opened to reveal Lewis, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, his sandy brown hair mussed up on one side. He held a handgun but didn't seem like he immediately intended to use it, his gun arm relaxed at his side with the weapon pointed to the floor.

Bucky snatch up Lewis's gun hand in his own metal hand and squeezed. Lewis shrieked.

"Drop it," Bucky commanded.

The weapon clattered to the floor. Bucky shoved the man backwards into the house and stepped in after him. Wilson followed and pulled the door shut while Bucky manhandled Lewis through the entranceway, into his kitchen, and shoved him down into a chair.

"Oh my god, oh my god, why are you doing this?" Lewis asked.

"Would you find a TV and put it on pretty loud?" Bucky asked Wilson, "that way the neighbours will think any sounds they hear are part of the show."

"On it," Wilson said.

"Oh my god," said Lewis.

Wilson found a TV and the house was filled with the sound of an infomercial. A moment later it flipped to an 80s action movie.

"Why are you doing this?" Lewis asked again. "I told you people I'm going to deliver Insight but this kind of work takes time. Where's Sorenson?"

"I'll ask the questions," Bucky said, "you answer them."

Lewis ignored this. "You are HYDRA, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes," said Bucky.

"Obviously," added Wilson, coming back into the room.

"Well, where's Sorenson? I usually talk to Sorenson."

"He's busy," Wilson replied.

"Sorenson's a woman," Lewis said, his voice shaking. "Oh my god, you're not HYDRA. Who are you?"

Bucky squeezed Lewis's shoulder uncomfortably hard. "Tell me about your work with HYDRA."

Lewis cringed. "I can't!" he protested. "HYDRA will kill me if I say anything, literally kill me, oh my god, they'd probably torture me first."

Bucky squeezed Lewis's shoulder again, and the man cringed. "But they're not here right now," Bucky said, "and I am. Tell me about HYDRA."

Lewis started babbling: "HYDRA. Um. They're really really serious. Like, they're like a cult, but with a lot of weapons, like a really, really violent cult, um. They have uniforms that are honestly kind of stupid-looking, um. Um, order, they're all about order, they want to bring order and an end to chaos and, um, disorder."

Most people, Bucky supposed, would assume that the point of torturing someone was to hurt them as much as possible. That wasn't it at all. Hurting people was depressingly easy and mostly not very useful. A person in extreme pain was like an animal: they could scream and thrash around and even fight, but they couldn't form a coherent sentence or answer a question.

The trick was to find that perfect amount of pain that would motivate a person to be helpful without leaving them incoherent. That amount varied wildly from person to person; the same injury could leave one person a screaming wreck, while another would shrug it off. But even if you got the pain right there was no guarantee of getting useful intelligence. People lied, people left things out. People said whatever they thought would make the pain stop, true or otherwise. Sometimes the pain bent their mind into a pretzel so they came out of it afterwards genuinely believing the lies they had told their interrogator to be true.

Lewis seemed like he'd have a low pain tolerance. Bucky decided he would fracture one of the bones in the man's finger.

But before Bucky could touch him, Lewis burst out: "I don't know where the base is! They literally pick me up every morning and put a hood around my head and drive me to work!"

"Alright," Bucky said, "tell me about your work with HYDRA."

"Okay, but, like I said, I don't know where the base is, so I don't really know what I can tell you, my job is actually pretty boring, I'm a data analyst. So."

Bucky took Lewis's hand in his own, peeled one finger away from the rest, and gave an experimental squeeze. Lewis screamed, tried to wrench his hand away, then doubled over in his chair, sobbing. 

Bucky hadn't even fractured the bone yet. At worst the man was going to have some bruising and swelling.

"It's Project Insight," Lewis gasped out. "It was started in 2014, HYDRA was a secret back then, they were working within government agencies, within SHIELD, they were going to bring order to the world by eliminating all the threats at once, but they were stopped by Captain America, you must have heard about this, everybody knows about it, it was in the news, the, the Black Widow dumped a bunch of secret HYDRA documents on the Internet."

Lewis's voice faded, echoing, into the distance. There was a sensation of white noise, of static. Pressing in from all sides. It was peaceful but also stifling, and lasted a long time, probably. It was the kind of sensation that, when you are in it, you don't notice it and don't notice that you are in it; Bucky became aware of it only as it began to fade.

"Alright there?" Wilson asked, but it wasn't Wilson's actual voice, it was the memory of his voice; he had said these words some time ago, and Bucky's brain was only now playing it back to him.

"What's with him?" Lewis asked uneasily. It was similarly an echo rather than a real thing; reality was only gradually folding back into itself.

"Tell me about your work with HYDRA specifically," Wilson said. There was a pause, and then: "hey, you can either talk to me, or you can to talk to him."

"HYDRA hired me to replicate Project Insight," Lewis replied shakily. "They still had a copy of the data from 2014 but they didn't know what to do with it, it was encoded. To read the data they needed Zola, but Zola was lost."

"By Zola you mean the artificial intelligence that was created in the 1970s to replicate the mind of Arnim Zola, the HYDRA scientist," Wilson clarified.

"That thing was hardly a true AI," Lewis said, sounding offended, "more like a primitive collection of algorithms. I guess it was advanced for the seventies. Zola and Project Insight were always linked. After Zola was destroyed, HYDRA still had the data, but without Zola it was theoretically impossible to convert the data to a useable form. Until they hired me, anyway. I was able to reverse engineer the surviving fragments of Project Insight to create a minimal simulation of the Zola algorithms." There was an expectant pause, as if Lewis was waiting for someone to tell him how terribly impressive he was.

"How soon?" Bucky gritted out.

"Oh, I've already completed the work," Lewis replied smugly, "I can generate the Insight data anytime I want. But I haven't told anyone that yet. I'm currently in a dispute with my employer."

Wilson's eyebrows shot up. "You're in a dispute. With HYDRA?" Lewis nodded. "What is the dispute about?"

"Remuneration," Lewis replied firmly.

"You want more money?" Wilson clarified. "Just to be clear, you re-created Project Insight, you're ready to help HYDRA murder millions of innocent people, but you're holding off because they haven't paid you enough?"

"It's not murder," Lewis corrected him, taking on the fussy tone of a slightly impatient school teacher addressing a group of bored twelve-year-olds, "it's just nature. It's a cull. That's natural. And those people are hardly innocent. Every one of them represents a threat to HYDRA, now or in the future."

"Do you even like HYDRA?" Wilson asked. "I'm just trying to understand."

"They aren't my favourite people," Lewis admitted. "They're hyper-violent, they take everything way too seriously, and their uniforms are ugly. I don't think they'd be much fun at parties. But they're right about some things. It's natural for the strong to rule over the weak. Only strength can bring order."

"And you're seriously comfortable with helping them end millions of people's lives?" Wilson wanted to clarify.

"It's actually nothing to do with me personally," Lewis explained, "I'm a worker with highly specialized skills, selling my labor on the open market. I just need to get paid."

"Right," Wilson said blankly.

Bucky spoke up. "How many copies of this data are there?"

Lewis gave a little flinch, and looked at Wilson. 

"Answer him," Wilson said.

"Two, that I know of. One is in this house, the other is hidden at a secret location. I'll sell them to you if you want. For 20 million dollars." Lewis grinned smugly. "Like I said, I need to get paid."

Bucky opened his mouth, but Wilson silenced him with a glare and a shake of his head.

"What about the HYDRA base," Wilson asked, "isn't there a copy there?"

"There was," Lewis replied, "I stole it and swapped it out for a decoy. I needed the leverage."

"For your salary dispute," Wilson clarified. "With HYDRA."

"It's not a salary, I'm an independent contractor. But yeah."

There was a shot and the sound of broken glass from inside the house. An alarm went off.

Lewis stood and turned to Wilson, his eyes wide with fear. "It's HYDRA, you have to protect me!"

Bucky stepped menacingly up to Lewis, who jerked back in fear. "You said one of the copies of the Insight data is in this house," Bucky growled. "Where is it?"

"Please!" Lewis begged, edging away from Bucky.

Bucky grabbed Lewis by the shoulder and shook the man roughly. "Where's the data?"

"Don't kill me!" Lewis squeaked.

"Just tell him," Wilson suggested calmly.

"The fridge, it's in the fridge, it's in a tupperware container, bottom shelf."

From the next room came the sound of more glass breaking - someone was clearing the glass from the window, preparing to climb through.

"Get it," Bucky growled. He shoved Lewis in the direction of the fridge and ran into the other room, where a man in tactical gear was climbing in, with one leg already swung over the window ledge. The man saw Bucky and reached for his gun, but Bucky grabbed him by his leg, dragged him the rest of the way into the room, drew a knife and slit his throat before he could make a sound. Bucky dragged the corpse out of the way, then crouched by the window. 

There was another shot and sound of broken glass from the back of the house, at the same time that another person came climbing through Bucky's window, a woman this time. Bucky slit her throat and tossed the corpse aside the same as the first.

A shot rang out from the kitchen, then Wilson's voice, no doubt addressed to Lewis: "Get down, stay down." Then Wilson pitched his voice louder: "Time to go!"

Bucky gritted his teeth at how Wilson was making himself a target by shouting like that. A third HYDRA agent came climbing through Bucky's window and Bucky shot him in the head, not bothering with the finesse of the knife this time. 

Five shots rang out, from the room behind the kitchen, a different gun than Wilson's. Shit. Bucky ran to the next room, a dining room where he found three more HYDRA agents, two of them on either side of the doorway leading into the kitchen; he shot the two who had Wilson pinned down in the kitchen, ducked and rolled to avoid being shot by the third, and at that moment Wilson ducked into the doorway and got a shot off; it missed, since Wilson didn't actually have a line of sight to the man, but it distracted him long enough for Bucky to get in a head shot. The man crumpled to the ground alongside his colleagues.

"Thanks," Wilson said.

Bucky followed Wilson back into the kitchen where Lewis was crouched under the table, muttering: "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god."

"Any more of them in the building?" Wilson asked.

"No," Bucky said. He was pretty sure. "Could be more outside though."

"Well, we need to get out of here," Wilson said.

"We can't go out the front, they'd pick us off before we got to the car," said Bucky.

"Lewis, you got a car in your garage?" Wilson asked. "Come on, get up man."

Lewis crawled out from under the table and stood. He held a tupperware container in his trembling hands.

"Lewis," Wilson said impatiently, "where are your car keys?"

"In the bowl by the front door," Lewis mumbled.

Bucky retrieved the keys while Wilson cajoled Lewis into the garage, bundled him into the backseat and told him to stay down. Bucky appeared a moment later and threw the keys to Wilson. "You drive, I'll shoot."

"Got it."

But there was no gunfire and no sign of pursuit as they pulled out of Lewis's driveway and down the suburban street.

"Guess we got all of them, after all," Wilson said.

"Yeah, maybe," muttered Bucky.

"So, am I driving anywhere in particular?" Wilson asked.

Bucky turned in his seat and held out his metal arm, palm open, to Lewis. "Give me the data," he growled. Lewis handed over the tupperware container. Turning back in his seat, Bucky flipped off the plastic lid to reveal a USB stick, which he crushed in his metal hand, grinding it back and forth between his fingers until the thing was reduced to little shreds of metal and plastic. He dumped the mess in the footwell and turned again to look at Lewis.

"You said there was another copy," Bucky said. "Where is it?"

Lewis gave a watery smile. "If you want that information," he said shakily, "you're going to have to pay for it."

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I remember, twenty million dollars, right? How stupid are you?"

"Hey," Wilson said softly, in a warning tone.

"The price went up," Lewis said smugly, "it's thirty million now."

Bucky asked, angry and annoyed: "Are you seriously going to make me find some empty building somewhere no-one will hear you scream so I can torture you? Because I thought you'd want to skip that part, but we can do that part if you want."

"Hey now, let's be calm," said Wilson.

"You won't torture me," Lewis said smugly, "not really, you're the good guys, you're not HYDRA. You follow a code."

"We don't have time for this," Bucky complained, and he climbed into the back seat.

"Barnes," Wilson said, his voice full of caution.

"Just drive," Bucky said, as he grabbed Lewis's hand and forced the fingers apart.

"Are you going to squeeze my finger again?" Lewis sneered.

"Yes," Bucky replied, and Lewis let out a blood-curdling scream, which continued for what seemed like a long time. Wilson cursed and turned the radio up as loud as it would go. The screaming finally ended on a choking sound as Bucky, having removed Lewis's shoe and sock, stuffed the man's sock into his mouth and clapped his hand over it. He then dragged Lewis sideways so that he lay across the seat, his legs twisted in the footwell, his head on Bucky's lap. The man struggled but Bucky held him in place easily.

Wilson turned the radio back down to a reasonable volume.

"It hurts, doesn't in?" Bucky said, in a creepily pleasant tone of voice. "It's because of the way I'm holding it, with a break like that, even the tiniest bit of pressure can be excruciating. The pain won't stop until I have what I want. But the pain can always get worse. So I'm going to take that thing out of your mouth and you're not going to scream. You're going to sit in your seat like everything is fine." He pulled the sock out of Lewis's mouth, and pulled the man up to a sitting position. "Now tell me where the Insight data is, and keep in mind, the sooner I get what I want, the sooner you get to stop hurting."

Lewis choked out: "It's in a storage locker in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 121 Grosvenor Street, it's about five hours' drive from here."

"Are you sure about that?" Bucky asked with mock-gentleness. "I'm going to give you a chance to change your mind right now, no repercussions, but you only get one chance."

"That's it," Lewis insisted, "it's there, look, the key is with my car keys on the keychain."

Wilson put the address in the car's GPS, and drove.

Bucky fretted that HYDRA might be tracking them. They weren't being followed, but there were other ways a vehicle could be tracked. If HYDRA had an in with law enforcement they could track Lewis's car by the license plate, through traffic cameras. Or they might have simply put a physical tracker on Lewis's car - thoroughly searching the car to make sure there wasn't one would take time and tools Bucky didn't have, and it was always possible to miss something like that anyway.

"We need to switch cars as soon as possible," Bucky announced, "HYDRA knows this one."

"Fine," Wilson replied, his voice flat and tense.

Lewis made a whining noise, for no discernible reason.

Bucky made Wilson pull over when he saw a car he liked a few minutes later, a restored older model Ford Mustang that he chose because he could easily boost the ignition. They switched vehicles, with Wilson once again behind the wheel, and Bucky and Lewis crammed into the back seat, which was a lot less roomy this time.

"Here's something I don't understand," Wilson said, while driving, "this new version of Project Insight uses the data from the original version, but that data is ten years old now. Why doesn't HYDRA just get new data?"

"Are you kidding?" Lewis replied incredulously. "They can't get new data. To get the 2014 data they needed either cooperation with or backdoors into telecommunications networks, the police and federal agencies, Facebook, Google, you name it. In 2014 HYDRA was embedded in SHIELD and the US government, so they had that kind of access, but today? No way. Obviously new data would be better than old data, but old data is still a lot better than nothing."

"And this data is, what, exactly?" Wilson asked. "A list of names?"

"Yes, exactly, a list of names of people who represent a threat to SHIELD, now or in the future. Mostly. I mean, obviously some inaccuracy will have crept in."

"So how does it work?" Wilson asked. "I mean, in 2014, HYDRA had three helicarriers. They don't have that now, do they?"

"No," Lewis replied. "Well, I don't know, it's not like they'd tell me about something like that, but I doubt it."

"So how do they kill all those people?" Wilson asked bluntly.

"How should I know?" Lewis asked, "I'm a data scientist, I don't do wetwork. I presume they'd just send out agents to eliminate the threats, you know, one at a time. The old-fashioned way."

It was a long drive. Wilson kept his eyes on the road, driving in silence with a blank, fixed expression that Bucky was pretty sure meant he was angry about the way things were going. Every few minutes Lewis would start crying or complaining. Bucky threatened to lock him in the trunk to shut him up.

It was just after 3 am when Wilson pulled into a motel parking lot and stopped the engine.

"What," Bucky said flatly.

Wilson didn't bother turning to look at him, just sat looking straight ahead as he replied: "I'm tired, man. You must be too. The storage locker won't open till 8 am anyway, we may as well get a little shut-eye."

"We can break in to the storage locker," Bucky replied.

"Or," Wilson countered, "we can wait until morning and go in there like normal people, get what we came for, no alarms, no property damage, no confrontations with security guards or the police. No muss, no fuss. HYDRA has no idea where we are or where we're going, we can afford to take a few hours."

Bucky said: "HYDRA is in disarray." His voice came out as a low growl. "The way they came at us with Natasha, and again at the house, it was uncoordinated. They didn't have a plan, they just came at us. But every minute we wait gives them another chance to get their shit together, to call their best people in, to get coordinated. If they realise we're going for the last copy of the Insight data, they'll throw everything they have at us."

Wilson didn't bother to argue. Instead he got out of the car, turned to lean in through the open door and said: "I'll get a room, you two wait here."

The door slammed shut, waking Lewis, who startled and made a choking noise as he inhaled some of his own drool.

"Fine," Bucky said.

"Whuh?" said Lewis.

Wilson returned a minute later with a room key, and Lewis seemed too sleepy and disoriented to protest much as Bucky and Wilson walked him to their room. The room seemed decent enough, with institutional white-painted walls and short grey carpet of the type that hid stains well. There were two double beds, each with an ugly but comfortable-looking brown-red-orange floral print cover.

Wilson dropped his keys on a bedside table and said: "Watch him, I'm taking a shower."

Lewis eyed the room with a sneer, said: "Wow, you guys sure picked the budget option, didn't you?" and started complaining that he should be the one to get the first shower. Bucky told him that he wasn't going to be getting a shower at all but if he was very, very lucky he wouldn't be getting any more of his fingers broken, either. He made the man strip down to his underwear - "Don't just throw the clothes on the floor, were you raised by animals? Fold them and make a neat pile." - and get into the bed furthest from the door. Lewis immediately complained that he needed to use the bathroom. Bucky told him to hold it.

Meanwhile Wilson went into the bathroom and had a phone conversation that he probably thought was too quiet for Lewis or Bucky to hear. But Bucky had better hearing than most people, and once Lewis was tucked into bed he didn't have anything to do other than eavesdrop.

"... you know damn well what the problem is," Wilson's voice was low and angry, "this mission is not exactly a clean fight. You sent me and Barnes to torture a man for information. Actually you sent Barnes to do that, I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here."

The thin voice from the phone was Natasha Romanoff's. "Did Lewis give you a lot of trouble?"

"Lewis was very easy, that's not the point."

"Then what is the point?" Romanoff sounded impatient.

"The point is that Barnes is obviously carrying a lot of trauma. Come on, Natasha, you sent a torture victim to commit torture, you have to know that's fucked up."

Romanoff's voice was expressionless: "Mobile phones are very easy to listen in to or track, so please use them for essential communication only. Anything else compromises mission security and wastes my time. Was there anything else you needed to discuss with me?"

Wilson said: "We are not done talking about this."

Romanoff hung up on him. 

A few seconds later the shower started.

Wilson emerged from the bathroom several minutes later, his hair damp, and he and Bucky agreed to each get two and a half hours' sleep, with Bucky taking the first watch. "It's not much, but it's still better than nothing", Wilson yawned. 

Bucky carried out the unpleasant task of supervising Lewis's trip to the bathroom - "Turn around, no, seriously, okay, I can't pee if you're looking at me, can't you just turn around, like, halfway or something, oh my god stop looking at me you perv" - and both Lewis and Wilson got themselves into bed. Bucky sat in a chair in the corner of the room facing both the window and the door, a handgun in his belt and his rifle resting on a table by his side, and settled in to watch and wait.

The rest of the night was uneventful. Bucky let Wilson sleep the whole night through. When Wilson called him on it in the morning Bucky explained that he didn't need much sleep, anyway.

"Well, thanks man," Wilson said, rubbing his eyes.

When they woke Lewis up the man immediately started complaining. "What's going to happen to me after you get the data? You can't just leave me on my own, HYDRA will kill me, you have to protect me."

Bucky just rolled his eyes and muttered: "I'm the one you should want protection _from_ , pal."

But Wilson's eyes slowly went wide, as if he'd just had a brilliant idea, and he told Lewis: "Hey, do you know who actually could protect you? The police."

Both Bucky and Lewis turned to look at Wilson with blank incomprehension.

"No, I mean it," Wilson said earnestly, "go to the police, give them everything you have on HYDRA."

"They'll arrest me," Lewis said slowly, so that it was almost a question.

"See, I don't think they will. You'll be bringing them incredibly valuable information. And you'll be doing it voluntarily, of your own free will. You'll be a whistleblower. They'll put you in protective custody, give you a new home, a new identity. They'll probably want you to testify against HYDRA, but first they have to _find_ HYDRA, track down their agents, arrest them and bring them to trial, and all of that could take years. In the meantime they'll keep you safe."

Lewis seemed to consider it. "But I worked on Project Insight," he said.

Wilson replied: "You were just a contractor, right? Obviously you didn't really understand what you were getting into. And as soon as you did understand, you went to the police, which is what any responsible citizen would do."

"Because of you guys," said Lewis.

"Yeah," Wilson said, considering, "listen, you don't need to mention us to the police at all if you don't want to. I mean, you can just tell them you decided to become a whistleblower on your own. It doesn't make any difference to us either way."

Lewis was quiet after that, lost in thought.

The trip to the storage locker was anti-climactic. Lewis did as he was told without complaint, and led them to a squat brick building with a sign labelling it 'Claremont Secure Storage Solutions'. They walked past a worker sitting at a front desk, surrounded by video screens showing various security feeds, who waved at them and said "Good morning," and otherwise paid them no attention whatsoever. Lewis guided them past rows of shutter doors to his own lock-up, which was empty apart from a single cardboard box; Lewis emptied out the box to reveal a pile of polystyrene packing peanuts and a single plastic baggie which contained a USB stick. Lewis handed the USB stick to Wilson.

"That's it?" Wilson asked.

"That's it," Lewis replied, sounding a little sad, "the last of the Project Insight data."

Wilson handed the USB stick to Bucky, who crushed it very thoroughly in his metal hand. Lewis let out a sigh.

As they made their way back out of the building, Wilson said encouragingly: "So, Lewis, you want us to drop you off at the police station?"

"Yeah," Lewis said, "yeah, take me to the police."

Wilson drove them to a local police station. He and Bucky watched Lewis walk in, and then continued to sit in the parked car, watching to make sure he didn't come straight back out again.

They sat in silence for a while, until Bucky said conversationally: "That story you told him, where the police wouldn't arrest him because he's a whistleblower - you know that's bullshit, right? HYDRA is classed as a foreign terror organisation, even if it is thought to be dormant. The local cops will arrest him and give him to the FBI who'll pass him on to the CIA, and the CIA will put him in a dark little hole somewhere and probably never let him out again."

"Obviously," said Wilson.

They sat in contemplative silence. Wilson said: "I'm hoping this will help Fury out. He's trying to get the federal authorities to take the remnants of HYDRA seriously as a threat. Maybe Lewis turning up with a bunch of juicy info about recent HYDRA operations will help with that." Wilson shrugged. "Anyway, he tried to help HYDRA commit mass murder, so I'm not exactly feeling sorry for the guy. Even if he is an idiot."

Bucky nodded.

"How about you?" Wilson asked.

Bucky looked at Wilson blankly.

"I mean, do you feel sorry for him?" Wilson asked.

"A little," Bucky admitted. "Like you said, he's an idiot."

Wilson pursed his lips and said: "So, now might not be the best time to bring this up but, last night, in the house, when we were interrogating Lewis. You kind of zoned out there for a minute."

Bucky replied: "Yeah. That happens sometimes."

Wilson said: "You zone out?"

Bucky said: "Yeah. Sorry. Thanks for stepping in."

Wilson said: "Okay. But, uh, does that happen often?"

"Pretty often." Bucky stared straight ahead. "Romanoff knows. It's probably why she sent you along with me for this mission."

Wilson raised a hand to his forehead as if he had a sudden headache. "Romanoff." He sighed. "So I hope this isn't insensitive, but I thought in Wakanda they, uh, more or less fixed you up."

"They removed the trigger words," Bucky replied, "and they gave me this nice arm." He held out the metal arm and rotated it in the air to demonstrate, before letting it relax again at his side. "They did a lot more than that," he added, after a moment's thought, "they gave me a place where I could really, truly rest, for a long time. I owe King T'Challa and Princess Shuri a debt I'll never be able to repay." He sighed. "But if you're asking, did they fix every single thing that's mentally wrong with me? The answer is no."

"Okay. You seem very relaxed about all of this."

"Getting mad doesn't help."

"No," Wilson agreed, "I guess it doesn't."

* * *

They kept their watch outside the police station for half an hour or so.

"So," Wilson said, "mission accomplished, I guess. Time to go home?"

Bucky replied: "We know there's still an active HYDRA base nearby. Lewis said they drove him to work every day, so figure a two hour radius from his house."

Wilson gave a strangled little laugh. "You want us to go after a base-full of HYDRA agents on our own right now? I mean, I get that you're a supersoldier and all, and I'm not exactly a slouch, but don't you think we'd be a little outgunned? Not to mention under-prepared and under-equipped. We don't even have a vehicle once we abandon this one." He patted the Mustang's steering wheel. "And we need to abandon this one pretty quick because it's probably been reported stolen by now."

"Call Romanoff, tell her to come here and meet us," Bucky said.

"You call her," Wilson countered.

Bucky obediently retrieved his phone from his duffel bag and placed a call.

Romanoff answered: "Yes?"

Bucky said: "Mission completed. We need you to come here and meet us for debrief. Approximate location is Granger Avenue, Ardmore, Philadelphia, call for an exact location when you get close."

There was a slight pause, then Romanoff replied: "On my way."

Bucky put the phone away. "She's on her way," he said unnecessarily.

Wilson stretched out in his seat, then reached for the keys. "Well, it'll take her a couple of hours to get here. Let's ditch this thing and then find a nice food place to hole up in. I don't know about you, but I could use some breakfast.

* * *

The restaurant was big and mostly empty, since it was mid-morning. Wilson and Barnes relaxed in a corner booth. They had demolished their breakfasts hours ago and had been nursing cups of coffee ever since.

Romanoff had joined them and ordered bacon and toast, coffee and juice.

"So all the remaining copies of the Insight data were destroyed?" she asked.

"All the copies Lewis knew about," Wilson clarified.

"Well, let's hope there isn't another copy floating around out there somewhere," Romanoff replied, "or we could end up having to deal with this same problem all over again sometime in the future." She tilted her head to one side and then the other, and rubbed her neck. She seemed tired. 

Bucky was feeling a little tired himself, having missed the previous night's sleep. He was still functional, but without an immediate threat to keep him alert he kept having to remind himself not to nod off.

"Kudos for getting Lewis to turn himself in to the police, by the way," Romanoff added, "that was a stroke of genius. Fury and I can't openly do a thing about HYDRA because it would set off another round of senators whining about us supposedly being vigilantes - "

"We are vigilantes," Wilson interrupted bluntly. "We shouldn't be, but we are."

Romanoff ignored this. "Anyway, Lewis turning himself in has already got people in high places sitting up and taking notice. With any luck, this will get HYDRA back on the radar as a current threat. So well done, both of you."

"That was all Wilson," Bucky put in.

Romanoff smiled. "Well done, Wilson. I hope the two of you are up for more missions like this."

Bucky said: "There's an operational HYDRA base nearby."

Wilson said at the same time, speaking over him: "No, actually, I'm not up for any more missions, not if they're going to be like this one. If I'm going to keep working with you, there's going to have to be some changes."

Bucky and Romanoff both looked at him. "What kind of changes?" Romanoff asked.

Wilson leaned forward. "No more of this spy shit, where you feed us the bare minimum of information and then send us on our way, without even telling us where the information comes from and who's really making the decisions. If I'm going to work with you, then we work together as a team. Everyone knows everyone else, everyone talks to everyone else. We need to trust each-other. We need to be less like SHIELD, and more like the Avengers."

"Because that went so well," Romanoff said sarcastically.

Wilson leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. "Sometimes it did. In any case, those are my terms. Either we do it that way, or I'm out."

Romanoff sighed. "That means you're out. You're valuable to us, Wilson, but you're not exactly our most valuable player."

"No, that would be Barnes, wouldn't it?" Wilson threw back.

Wilson and Romanoff both cast a glance at Bucky, who took a sip of his lukewarm coffee, staring straight ahead.

"He gets shit done," Romanoff agreed with a shrug.

"Yeah, the Winter Soldier at your beck and call," Wilson said quietly. "How do you think Steve would feel about you using his friend like a blunt tool you can point at whatever mess you want cleaned up?"

Romanoff went very still. "Do you think everything is nice, clean fights out in the open?" she asked acidly. "Like Steve, with his uniform and his shield? Most of the time, that's not how the real work gets done."

They glared at each-other.

Wilson said: "Well, I guess I'm out, then."

Bucky said abruptly: "I'm with Wilson."

Wilson and Romanoff both turned to look at him.

"What do you mean?" Romanoff asked quietly.

Bucky shrugged, and replied: "I'm with Wilson. Where he goes, I go."

They both looked at him like he was a dog that had jumped onto a table and started tap dancing. Wilson opened his mouth, but he didn't say anything.

"That's - " Romanoff said.

"I'm not sure - " Wilson began, but they both trailed off. 

"Steve gave him the shield," Bucky said softly.

Romanoff glared at him for a few moments longer, then sighed and leaned back in her chair, deflated. "Well," she said, "I guess that's how it is then. Are you sure?" She glared some more at Bucky.

"Yes," Bucky replied.

"Then I need to make a phone call." She stood and walked out of the diner without another word.

Wilson watched her go and shook his head. "You are one surprising guy," he said.

Bucky gave a little shrug.

"To tell you the truth," Wilson began in a more serious tone, "I don't really know why Steve gave me the shield. And if I'm being honest, I'm not even sure I want it."

"That's smart," Bucky said, "that's real smart. That thing may be a shield, but it's also a target. It attracts trouble."

"Now, I didn't necessarily say I _don't_ want it, either," Wilson added.

Bucky smiled wistfully. "You're like him," he said. "I mean, you're not like him, but. You always try do the right thing. And you have a tendency to run toward trouble instead of running away from it."

Wilson chuckled and shook his head ruefully.

Bucky went on: "But Steve giving you the shield, it means he trusted you to do the right thing, but it doesn't mean you have to always do things the way he would have done them."

"Okay," Wilson said. He was getting a little choked up. "But, uh, what about you? I mean, you followed Natasha Romanoff, and now you're apparently willing to follow me - and that's, that's really, really great - but, what about Bucky Barnes, what about what that guy wants?"

Bucky shook his head and stared into his coffee. "Nah," he said. His voice went quiet. "I'm just an old soldier with a mind like swiss cheese. And a lot of debts to pay." He chuckled ruefully. "I have this arm, and I have some, uh, skills - I didn't choose to have them, but here I am. I can serve, I guess, try to balance out some of what happened before. But it won't - I've been compromised, you know? I would never - I prefer to leave the thinking and the planning to other people."

"Because you don't trust yourself," Wilson concluded.

Bucky shrugged. "Or maybe I'm just lazy."

"Lazy, huh?" Wilson shook his head. "Lazy's good, I can work with lazy. Listen, when we get back to New York, how about you make up for the past two months that you've been shunning me, spend an evening at my place, we'll get some take-out, watch some Netflix or something like that. Are you in?"

Bucky shrugged. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm in."

Wilson grinned. "Well, alright then."


End file.
